Or Two, Eleven, or Twelve
by zlot
Summary: One shot. Follow up to "One Night in Arendelle" He couldn't think to show her that and trust her not to delve.


"Frozen" is made and owned by Disney.

* * *

The fire took to form and then the smoke soon followed suit.

It billowed above the waves and danced like feathers in the wind.

And burning churning underneath broke smoke with vapor thin.

A cloud of black, a cloud of white, and a bright blue shining sea,

Partitioned one way by auburn light and the other by autumn breeze.

The firelight strobed and gave the fjord a strong and salty sheen.

It flickered and his hand flicked up and left the air pristine.

So sparks and vapor broke the smoke leaving ash to fall and drown.

A wind of Blaise's sharp convection led the ash to ground.

Then Anna reached down with intent to build of the magic fallen soot.

He smiled and nodded and soon descended into contentious direction.

The princess carried the flakes of smoke out to the salt and white sand shore.

A phoenix she said she wanted to build, having seen it only once before.

How fires rose from purity and softly struck out the night,

Was how she wanted to set a sculpture onto the seaside sight.

Anna wished to immortalize a new ashen invention.

With her it felt like their thoughts never disagreed.

By norm he'd begrudge a thing to last but by Anna that thought was freed.

Ash was not like snow, which Anna was forced to learn.

Though once she'd thawed, it eluded her how to mend what's already been burned.

But black as dying flames the bird's legs faintly held their own.

A body just as faded joined as fast as it was grown.

And what about the wings? She asked. Birds just couldn't do without.

The head came first, he thought out loud, of which he had no doubts.

Their delicate work of size so slight came under the threat of tides.

Blaise smelted the nearby sand into glass walls on all sides.

Guarded against the watery siege, their worked continued unhindered.

And the head found its balance atop the bird's shaky body of cinders.

To see a bird this small from the castle would take eyes like a hawk.

Anna was fast to admit she didn't think her own so sharp.

Or else she might have seen the truth in Prince Hans' liar's tarp.

She didn't mention that before, Blaise said about the cover.

But the girl who was bad at metaphors shrugged off her crackling other.

And they set out to build the wings with the little black dust left.

And still every pair they crafted fell apart beneath its heft.

So as the sun was setting, Blaise cast an igneous mold.

Of lava cooled by sea tides crystal walls just couldn't hold.

Out like an urn, he poured it, soot and echoes in the sand.

Out like a plant, they sprouted, plumage hot as iron brand.

It fumed right as it flew, and Anna's shoulder was its perch.

Its talons' mess could burn away, like the ashes sourced of birch.

She set her hand on its fiery wing but didn't feel a lick of heat.

To both such safety seemed to be no matter of easy feat.

But try as he might, he couldn't escape those hawk eyes before he talked.

Of course he didn't get away, of course she asked him more.

So Blaise recounted from the start, from a time when he was four.

Growing up he liked to play with wooden building blocks.

His brother, elder by one year, would sometimes help him out.

Jonnanes, though, had other things he had to think about.

Alone he often sat and played in castles big and small.

Each one finer than the last. One stood from wall to wall.

The younger brothers looked with awe at everything he'd done.

The castles changed each day to day with blocks laid one by one.

He stared at then for hours before ever knocking them down.

But when Johannes joined again, Blaise couldn't help but frown.

The greatness wooden, tall, and stout, Johannes didn't want to end.

The others nodded, only Blaise opposed the preserving trend.

The largest fortress ever made of little selfsame squares,

Was effort of all his brothers but none of his own care.

In red and blue and green and gold, it stood there grand and high,

That by mistake it'd never fall. It's end would never seem nigh.

That much was how, for Blaise at least, his toys went out of stock.

He sat outside in hollow halls with walls of patterns facing.

He first learned about his fire when he set them patterns tracing.

Every corner, every curve, there wasn't a thing he missed.

All came forth, all burst to light when he waved his waved his hands around.

Bright and warm the flames all flickered with a wonderful crackling sound.

For weeks he moved from wall to wall for different shapes and lines.

At last he thought he'd traced them all in detail sharp and fine.

It seemed to him no secret that should bother being kept.

Indeed he showed it off to every person that he met.

There came his first encounter with the people scared of fire.

The ones who he thought couldn't tell a cinder from its pyre.

Flames he had all to himself, and alone he found his mirth.

For weeks on end he lit the windows and questioned the fire's worth.

When every bend he knew by heart, to the blocks he reminisced.

The door to the playroom brushed past spires with a quarter inch to spare.

The painted wood was set and left to rot with him to stare.

Blaise couldn't believe his eyes that showed where the newest bricks were laid.

Some inner wrath was whispering of a sudden debt to be paid.

The reach of heat was far and his sparks could fly across rooms.

He set each side to fast ignite and meet their fiery doom.

Even in panic his brothers, when they ran in, seemed to pass,

Without disturbing anything and still running so fast.

Not a torch nor lamp they saw, and knew the truth right off.

And though one pastime smoldered away, Johannes called by his cough,

The boys all gathered, close and hushed, in awe of his lack of shame.

And soon they'd become what they couldn't know would be their brother's bane.

They asked him first if his magic loosed, and Blaise stoutly told them no.

It was no accident, but if it was, the blocks would be last to go.

Then with the ashes falling down, he picked up small black smears.

He piled ashes into shapes still pleasing to its seers.

And be that powder black or white, to Anna it seemed all the same,

For him to have found a rival to Elsa's snow within the flames.

And on his story pushed: away from toys and onto books.

How he learned to read and how him reading thorough shook.

And everything that afterward that served to shape him deep.

And every lesson he took from those years as his childhood keep.

And yes, he said, he had a brother, or two, eleven, or twelve.

* * *

AN: Yes, it's a bit shorter than the other one, and I only have myself to blame for that. It took longer to write, too. I've just got a pile of ideas leaping out that I should really start committing to paper. Or document. And it's about time to get back to something else.


End file.
